The present invention relates to a mining shovel, and in particular to an idler wheel assembly.
Front idler wheel assemblies are used in conjunction with machines, such as, among other applications, mining shovels, which utilize a straddle mount axle shaft support where the axle shaft is intended to rotate with the idler wheel. The current front idler wheel and idler axle shaft configuration utilizes a splined joint between the shaft and the wheel. The spline connection provides a torsional constraint between the two; however, the spline connection does not constrain the wheel from sliding axially from side to side across the splines. Side to side motion across the splines results in high wear between the components of the front idler wheel assembly. Furthermore, splined components found in the current idler wheel configurations are expensive to manufacture.